Any advantages of the reduced travel times on two new motorways – via Transmission Gully out of Wellington now extends north past Otaki, and Auckland motorway extensions south now bypassing Huntly and Hamilton – appear to have been lost by NZTA (aka Waka Kotahi ) lowering the speed limits everywhere. This confirms poor planning and shows what a pickle their traffic planners are in.

Any tourists being guided by the internet or following the traffic signs to travel between Auckland and Wellington, or any other locations needing to use the central spinal route i.e. Rotorua or Tauranga to head south to another major scenic tourist destination like Turangi for example, are now sent around the western side of Lake Taupo on SH32 (via Whakamaru) and 41 (via Tokaanu) instead.

It is difficult to understand their logic – that after investing $Millions in developing the eastern bypass to reduce congestion in Taupo, they now direct all traffic to head west around the lake at Tokoroa for traffic heading south, or at Turangi for traffic heading North. Their cunning strategic plan may be to give them another excuse not to upgrade or reroute the SH1 traffic inland to avoid the tight 25 kmph dangerous corners on Bulli Point (see photo of the latest crash on November 2023) as most of the volume is now being redirected out west away from Taupo.

According to SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed is the Manager of all strategic traffic planning at TRM) this confirms that Turangi must develop commercially much quicker (at Taupo’s expense!) as the most convenient halfway stopping point will create a huge demand for new cafes. But as they – Waka Kotahi – refuse all applications for any cafes on SH1, this will result in many more “temporary” containers and caravans and pie carts to pop up in every other available pull-over parking rest area instead.

The “temporary” nature of these pie carts is evident in the nearest “cafe” to TRM located about 300 m north in the car park on the south side of the Tongariro River bridge. It started life as a caravan next to council toilets about 18 years ago when the original operator Shaz developed a very popular business rapport with all the anglers from the Bridge Pool. Since then the Council removed the toilets and the new owners have replaced the caravan with a more substantial shipping container. So much for being temporary and avoiding all the restrictions and toilets etc. that any real cafe would need to include.

In the future these shipping containers will become the most prominent tourist feature on SH1. (This is not intended as any criticism of their coffee cart as a similar story of other temporary pie carts could be told many times along the length of SH1.)

Taupo is also missing out on many tourist bikers completing the epic Tour Aotearoa as their bike trails do not link with any other trails north or south but they do not appear to care – see map above.

The NZTA (Waka Kotahi) press release reads:

Auckland to Wellington: 12 to 30 more minutes

Between Auckland and Wellington, 284km of the 642km of road has been identified as having a safe and appropriate speed of 80km per hour, according to Waka Kotahi’s Road to Zero speed analysis system.

Using Waka Kotahi’s travel time analysis, the New Zealand Herald estimated changing the speed limit from 100km/h to 80km/h on all 284km of road would add about 20 minutes to the roughly eight-hour journey.

This 20-minute increase in travel time comes from Waka Kotahi’s automated analysis of what it thinks the mean operating speed – how fast motorists actually drive – will be after the speed limit changes are applied. In some cases, the agency expects the new mean operating speed to be higher than the new speed limit.

When the Herald repeated the calculation with a maximum mean operating speed of the proposed speed limit (80km/h), the increase in travel time between Auckland and Wellington is about 30 minutes.

However, for truck drivers, who are already driving slower than other road users in 100km zones, the impact could be as low as 13 minutes and up to about 20 minutes.

Newly opened roads between Auckland and Wellington are likely to further reduce the increase in travel time.